The final part of any IMC deals with arguably the most incriminating evidence about the campaign success or failure… yes it’s time for Measurement. The class started off by discussing the United Airlines case wherein the message delivered by the airline was not appreciated by the TG because of the poor service thus creating a brand paradox / disconnect.
This case threw up an interesting point – “having a brand does not necessarily mean being branded” – for instance, airlines are brands but offer largely generic, not differentiated services and customers choose one from the other based on cheapest fare and best suited timings. On the other hand, luxury good like a good cologne are products which are truly branded as one is distinct from another. But even USPs of a brand comes with a sell-by date. For instance, when Air Deccan was launched, it was different from the rest of the airlines operating by virtue of its offering as a low cost airline and thus was branded. Its USP at the time was reflected in its pioneering campaign theme at the time – “now everyone can fly” which appealed to its erstwhile TG. As the low cost carrier market in India became cluttered, Deccan changed its campaign to “Simplifly” which bombed on account of its poor service and its reputation took a severe beating as the TG could not identify simplicity with Deccan – flying on Deccan was far from a simple experience. This forced Deccan to hide behind the Kingfisher brand when it eventually got taken over by the UB group.
Measurement of a campaign therefore essentially tries to evaluate the degree of effectiveness of the customer message through the campaign based on the customer experience the brand has. There must be a connect between customer experience and customer message – this is the reason why a brand like LIC can’t use youthful themes in their promotion.
Measurement Techinques:
1. Generic:
2. Measuring B2C Campaigns:
3. Measuring B2B Campaigns: This can done using ROI unlike in the case of B2C campaigns since the promotion/campaign cost has a direct correlation to sales in a B2B environment. For instance B2B campaign is built on telemarketing, sales calls, employing extra salesmen etc. from which the Communication to lead ration and subsequently Lead to conversion ratio can be calculated. Also since cost of the campaign and the revenue is know, ROI is a good indicator of campaign effectiveness. In case of B2C ROI cannot be used to measure campaign effectiveness as in a B2C environment, repeat purchases, snowball effect of referrals and average order size pre and post campaign is nearly impossible to track.4. Online Measurement: In this case the medium itself is the measurement. The net is perfect for measuring the click through rates of advertisements, number of repeat visitors, number of registrations/subscriptions and number of forwards (referrals). Also the internet can be used for emailer campaigns and the ROI of such a campaign can be effectively used for measuring its success. Also the internet can be used to measure the effectiveness of various contests and coupon based promotion schemes as a part of the Integrated Marketing Campaign.